Will you give me a discount in return for my feature request?

I’ve shortened the first part of his message for brevity, but the rest is 100% exactly what he wrote to us:

FROM: Some user <somebody@somewhere>

I am trying to [some random thing, we have no idea what he’s talking about]
Do you have anything like that?

If NOT and you implement it, will you give me some kind discount for the suggestion?

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We honest to God laughed out loud when we read that last line.  I wanted so bad to reply back “Yes, pretty please won’t you give us a suggestion for something to do with all our free time over here, PLEASE!!”.  (But I didn’t.)

Seriously though.  The poor guy must not understand that feature requests are a dime a dozen.  EVERYBODY has some idea, and everybody thinks THEIR idea is the most amazing thing ever.  (I got news for you: they’re not.)  Nobody ever stops to think our schedules might already be full, or that maybe we have our own ideas to pursue.

So yeah… some random guy with some random idea that I honestly couldn’t even understand what he was trying to say… and he wants me to PAY HIM for the suggestion?  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I love this guy!

Customer From Hell – A Case Study

Customer makes a purchase through our website on Saturday, May 16th at 11:11pm (our timezone).

Seven minutes later at 11:28pm, he opens a support ticket:

my order confirmation number is [number]

with my PayPal with email [email address]

I no longer have access to this email above help me today please before I cancel payment through paypal

How nice is that? Demanding we help him “today” (on a Saturday) and threatening a chargeback right off the bat.  Well we don’t work on weekends, much less after 11PM on any day.  Nobody will even see his message until Monday, but that doesn’t stop him from leaving a flurry of messsages:

11:35pm – he sends us a copy & paste of the email confirmation he got from PayPal.

12:07am – he sends us a copy & paste of the email confirmation he got from our website.  (So obviously he got both these emails… why is he saying he doesn’t have access to them??)

3:55am – “just resend the welcome email i updated me email on paypal”

4:06am – he opens a 2nd support ticket with the message: “My purchase needs to be added to or moved to this account thank you”

5:18am (on support ticket #1) – “whats going on is someone going to address this”

5:25am – he sends us an email with the same copy & pastes as above.

5:26am (on support ticket #2) – “ok im going to cancel through paypal”

5:38am (on support ticket #1) – “i just canceled this with paypal. thank you.”

And indeed, at 5:38am he opened a dispute with PayPal.  So in the space of 6 hours, on a Saturday night into Sunday morning, he opens 2 support tickets and sends a total of 8 messages, plus 1 email, then opens a PayPal dispute.  For real.

On Monday we reply to all his messages and he closes the PayPal dispute.  End of round 1.


 

Round 2.

June 4th. He opens a support ticket saying “I have the [name of product] but there is no purchase history”.  He seems to be referring to the My Account area of our website where he would be able to see his purchase history.  He’s created a 2nd account under a different email address from the one he purchased with, which is why he’s not seeing anything.  We tell him this.

June 12th, he replies:

well check this out I need support and so far your support is so so …. [name of product] is broken i need the up date [name of 1 random file that’s part of our plugin]

so check this out again

[then he copy & pastes again his original purchase receipt email]

OUR support is “so so”?  We’re not the ones who can’t keep their email account straight, but okay dude.  Now for the first time he’s saying something is “broken”, although he doesn’t elaborate any detail as to what exactly that means.  And he’s asking for a specific file to be updated, which is such a random, nonsensical request, we don’t know what to make of it.

We reply asking for some info to help us sort everything out, and we also explain again which account he needs to login under to find his purchase.  He never replies.  End round 2.


 

Round 3.

July 21st. He opens 2 new support tickets back to back.  The first one:

I NEED TO RE DOWNLOAD ALL MY PURCHASES

Because typing in all caps helps us to understand so much better.

The second one:

ORDER NUMBER: [number]

[order number] needs to be added to my profile and history of purchases

Well at least he turned caps lock off, but he still hasn’t found any of his punctuation keys.

We go through a series of messages with him.  We again explain how he’s created 2 different accounts on our site, and telling him which one he needs to log into to see his purchases.  Eventually we transfer his purchase from the 1 account to the other, which seems to make him happy (or, at least, he stopped replying after that and went away.  Not so much as a “thank you”…).  End Round 3.


 

Round 4.

December 27th. He opens a new support ticket from yet another email address, and now a 3rd separate account that he’s created on our site:

I lost access to everything email cell phone website i mean everything

Hello my names is [name] my business is [name of business]

I had purchased the [name of product] when I received my stimulus check last summer I have the files but I do not have my serial licences for each extension please help.

We point out that he now has 3 separate accounts on our site, and ask him if he has access to either of the previous 2 logins.  Then on December 30th he replies:

no i do not sir. i lost everything and it is very hard to recover from this … but the bright side of life is I am no longer homeless I am renting my gf and myself so now I have stability for my business and myself.

By this point we’re closed for New Years and the weekend, it won’t be until Monday January 4th that we see his message and reply again.  Meanwhile he replies again with this:

ok well whats the hold im suppose to half [name of product] you guys sentme an email because I switched e,mail accounts short time after my purchase please just me my serials

We reply and transfer his purchase (again) to his now latest account.  End of round 4.

Anyone wanna place bets how long it will be until he loses his email access again?  How long will it be before he’s asking us to transfer his purchase to yet another account?  Sigh.

How to choose the right Adblocker

I hate ads. (Who doesn’t?) For me, having an adblocker in my browser is mandatory.

Recently I was working from a new computer that didn’t have an adblocker yet, so I popped into the Chrome extensions store and searched for “adblock”. So many different ones popped up — many with similar or purposefully deceptive names, I had to research again which one was the “right” one that I wanted.

So here to save you the effort, and to remind myself in the future if I ever forget again, is the one you want:

Continue reading How to choose the right Adblocker